Will AND Living Trust...?

We are meeting with an attorney this next week to FINALLY get the will done. :/ He and I have talked a bit about a living trust also...but I honestly don't know exactly what that entails and what the main benefit to that would be. Of course we will be going over specifics to our situation on this with him, but I am trying to prepare and educate myself a bit before then.

I was wondering how many of you have gone for the complete estate plan or did you simply complete simple will planning with your attorney? Any pro's and con's for each that you may have come across in your experience and can share with me would be appreciated!

Comments (9)

Do you have any major assets besides your house, cars, retirement accounts, bank accounts/other taxable accounts, 529s, life insurance policies? Are your individual estates (so not your joint, but your share of the joint) greater than $5.25m? If you answered "no" to both of these questions, you probably don't need a living trust. Just be sure to properly title/complete beneficiary forms for everything listed in the first question. However, you should get powers of attorney and health care directives (sometimes called living wills).

Oh, in that case, my gut is that a living trust isn't necessary. I just did a quick google on your state's estate tax exemption and it's equal to that of the federal exemption. But look into those other documents I mentioned.

Also consider setting up guardianship papers and a testamentary trust. That creates a trust for your assets upon your death if you want your kids to not receive everything they have inherited right at 18. In the trust you can specify that money can be used for college, etc, but you can name someone else to manage that so they can't just blow through at 18. You can specify a later age for them to get full control.

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